July 7, 1887] 



NATURE 



22 



Still, it will not be counted Chauvinism if I say that in the 

 establishment of these two great generalizations Her 

 Majesty's subjects have quitted themselves like men. 

 With regard to a third generalization, neither England 

 nor Germany has been idle. Omitting the name of many 

 a noble worker in both countries, the antiseptic system of 

 (Surgery assuredly counts for something in the civilized 

 [world. And yet it is but a branch of a larger generaliza- 

 tion, of momentous import, which in our day has been ex- 

 tended and consolidated to an amazing degree by a Gallic 

 investigator. To some, however, any flower culled in this 

 garden will be without odour. Let me therefore add a 

 sweet-scented violet under the name of spectrum analysis 

 which, besides revealing new elements in matter, enables 

 the human worker to stretch forth his hand to sun and 

 stars, to bring samples of them, as it were, into his 

 laboratory, and to tell us, with certainty, whereof they 

 are composed. Surely all these, and other discoveries of 

 high importance, taken and bound together, form an 

 intellectual wreath, not unworthy of Her Majesty's 

 acceptance in her Jubilee year. 



A short time ago an illustrious party leader summed up 

 the political progress of the Queen's reign. What I have 

 said will, I trust, show that the intellectual world is not 

 entirely compounded of party politics — that there is a 

 band of workers scattered over the earth whose arena 

 is the laboratory rather than the platform, and who noise- 

 lessly produce results as likely to endure, and as likely to 

 influence for good the future of humanity, as the more 

 clamorous performances of the politician. 



One word more. On the continent of Europe, kings 

 had been the nursing fathers, and queens the nursing 

 mothers, of science ; while Republican Governments 

 were not a whit behind in the liberality of their subven- 

 tions to scientific education. In England we had nothing 

 of this kind, and to establish an equivalent state of 

 things we had to appeal, not to the Government, but to 

 the people. They have been roused by making the most 

 recondite discoveries of science the property of the com- 

 munity at large. And as a result of this stirring of the 

 national pulse— this development of self-reliance — we see 

 schools, colleges, and universities now rising in our midst, 

 which promise by and by to rival those of Germany in 

 number and importance. 



It is time that I should cease. But before doing so, I 

 would ask — as they do in the House of Commons — per- 

 mission to say a word in personal explanation. I have 

 climbed some difficult mountains in my time, and after 

 strenuous effort for a dozen hours or more, upon ice, rock, 

 and snow, I have not unfrequently reached the top. I 

 question whether there is a joy on earth more exhilarat- 

 ing than that of the mountaineer, who, having achieved 

 his object, is able to afford himself, upon the summit, a 

 foaming bumper of champagne. But, my lords and 

 gentlemen, the hardest climb, by far, that I have ever 

 accomplished, was that from the banks of the Barrow 

 to the banks of the Thames — from the modest Irish roof 

 under which I was born to Willis's Rooms. Here I have 

 reached my mountain-top, and you — God bless you ! — 

 have given me a bumper which no scientific climber ever 

 before enjoyed. 



Sir Frederick Pollock, in proposing the toast of 

 " Literature and Art," said that on most occasions similar 

 to the present one this toast was a triple one, and in- 

 cluded the three sisters— Science, Literature, and Art. 

 But this evening they were assembled together to do 

 homage to science, in the person of one of its most dis- 

 tinguished votaries, and for the time the room in which 

 they had met became a temple of science. In such a 

 temple the principal figure, standing upon the pedestal 

 appropriated to the presiding goddess, must be that of 

 Science, and to her due rites had been already rendered. 

 But for the sisters Literature and Art room must be found . 



also in the sacred edifice ; they too must have their 

 altars and their shrines. He pointed out that the highest 

 powers of the imagination were required by the man of 

 science, as well as by the poet and the painter, and 

 instanced the prediction by Fresnel of the bright spot in 

 the centre of the shadow of a disk ; and the suggestion 

 made to Goethe of his theory of the development of 

 the vertebrate skeleton, by his accidental observation of 

 the scattered fragments of the deer's skull lying in his 

 path. He adduced the names of Aristotle, Bacon, and 

 other great men who had connected literature with 

 science ; and instanced Leonardo da Vinci, and Sir 

 Christopher Wren, one of the founders of the Royal 

 Society, as linking together science and art. He accord- 

 ingly had great pleasure in submitting for acceptance 

 " Literature and Art," coupling with it the name of Lord 

 Lytton, who was not only a distinguished representative 

 of modern literature, but had also a distinct hereditary 

 claim to represent that of the last generation ; and Sir 

 Frederick Leighton, the distinguished President of the 

 Royal Academy. 



The Earl of Lytton, — In returning thanks for " Litera- 

 ture" upon an occasion when we are all met to honour 

 science in the person of one of its most illustrious adepts, 

 I cannot but forcibly remember that we are living in an age 

 when inquiry is more active and more widespread than 

 conviction, and it is natural that in minds of the highest 

 order under these conditions even the imaginative faculty 

 should be more powerfully attracted to scientific research 

 than to purely literary production. But inquiry, I think, 

 would be very sterile if conviction in some form or another 

 were not the ultimate fruit of it, and I think that for a 

 period of really vigorous, creative, imaginative art we 

 must look forward in the course of scientific research to 

 some such general re- settlement of ideas upon the basis 

 of a common conviction — which is not now, perhaps, alto- 

 gether attainable — as may enable art, instead of represent- 

 ing, as it does now, merely the mental attitude of the 

 individual poet or the individual painter, once more to 

 become the universally spontaneous and universally 

 recognized imaginative expression of ideas and emotions 

 which are common to a whole generation or a whole 

 community. If that is the case, if science is ultimately 

 to render this great service to literature and art, surely 

 in the meanwhile we cannot but gratefully appreciate the 

 literary labours of those men of science who in our own 

 and in other countries are promoting or have promoted 

 this result, not only as original discoverers but also as 

 popular and powerful interpreters of scientific fact, and 

 who in this latter capacity have already enriched contem- 

 porary literature with writings of rare literary value. 

 If, instead of returning thanks for literature, I were 

 permitted to return thanks on behalf of literature to 

 those writers who have powerfully influenced my own gene- 

 ration, not only by thoughts which stimulate and instruct 

 the intellect, but also by words which stir and elevate the 

 heart, then assuredly I should ask leave to mention some 

 distinguished names which occupy in the field of literature 

 a position only second to the high rank they hold in the 

 hierarchy of science ; and foremost among those names I 

 should not hesitate to mention with a special personal 

 gratitude the name of the illustrious man who is 

 the honoured guest of this great assembly to-night. I 

 cannot say it is as a student of science that I myself have 

 studied the writings of Prof. Tyndall, but this I can say, 

 and most truly, that those writings have been to me, from 

 a very early period of my life, companions so cherished 

 that I learnt to look upon their writer as a dear personal 

 friend and benefactor long before it was my privilege to 

 be admitted to his personal intimacy. I believe that 

 scientific research has succeeded in establishing on a 

 physiological basis certain evidences of intelligence even 

 among oysters ; and certainly there is, I think, one form 

 of intelligence which is conspicuously displayed by the 



